An Enjoyable Read: So Brave, Young and Handsome

Several years ago, my wife bought me a book to read based on a review she had read in one of her magazines. That book was a debut novel by Leif Enger, entitled Peace Like a River. Peace was a thoroughly enjoyable tale about a young asthmatic boy and an unfortunate family adventure across the upper Great Plains in the early 1960's. I'm not sure if it was an unsurprising affinity I held with the main character, or if it was simply the pure and inspired imagery of the prose, but I distinctly recall thinking that this was a book I could read again and again. I waited eagerly for the next work that I was certain would come.

Years passed, and yet there was nothing forthcoming from Mr. Enger. After a while, I stopped looking for new releases. That is, until a couple of weeks ago, when I went looking for a book to read during our brief vacation in Hilton Head. It was then I discovered that Mr. Enger did indeed have a second novel that went to print back in 2008 entitled So Brave, Young and Handsome. Yet again, I found myself quickly drawn into the author's simple storytelling, guiding the reader on an adventure as slow as a meandering stream and as fast as runaway rapids. Set in the early 20th century, So Brave is an outlaw tale, part old style Western, part Les Miserables and part Unforgiven, and once again I found an affinity with the protagonist, an accidental author who found success his first time out but great difficulty in reproducing that success. Indeed, it is hard not to wonder if there is a little bit of an autobiographical thread being offered. Nonetheless, as I did with Peace, I simply allowed the wonderful wordcraft to pour over me. One example is below, where Monte Becket is helping his mysterious neighbor build a boat:

While the water heated he handed me a block plane and showed me how to remove, by long angled strokes, curls of wood from the bow's rough stem. Paying no heed to my apprehension he set me working downward on the left edge, himself working upward on the right; stroke by stroke the bow grew more fluid and proportionate while curls slid down like ringlets and dropped in aromatic heaps. I could have shouted, could have wept, but Glendon was all business and wanted that stem just so. There was no talking for many minutes. When we finished my forearms were covered with shavings and I felt the weariness of a better man.

Simply delightful. Especially that last sentence. Just as gripping, to me at least, were the inner conflicts tormenting the heart of Monte Becket. Having once written a grand tale that he could only imagine but not possibly know, Becket would find that without this knowing he would never again be able to pen words with anything resembling passion until such time as life's experiences would offer him the fortune of a reawakened inspiration. These doubts and fears of fading into nothingness play out through the entire novel, and in its wake Enger leaves nuggets of wisdom that sometimes will catch the reader unaware.

One of the more delightful twists is the inclusion of a real life character into the story, Charles Siringo, an author himself and an agent with the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Wikipedia has a fascinating summary of Siringo's activities with Pinkerton, to include his involvement with Butch Cassidy's gang.

While my opinion matters little, I cannot but heartily recommend both of Enger's works. There are books I read that I know I'll never pick up again. Yet these two are both ones I hope I get a chance to re-read, simply for the pure, boyish fun of it.